


Ties that bind (me to you)

by Vracs



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Ancient Rome, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Light BDSM, Praise Kink, Smut, Top!Eve, a take on Theseus and the minotaur, explicit part 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:54:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23314954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vracs/pseuds/Vracs
Summary: Villanelle remains Rome's undefeated gladiator. She's sent to Crete to slay the minotaur, using Eve's red string to guide her back to safety and to the woman she loves. What'll finally bring her to her knees?In three parts.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 136
Kudos: 419





	1. Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone for reading all my previous work - the response to Love Language has been insane! 
> 
> This one's a little different and totally inspired by THOSE promo pics.

//

This is the seventh time she's watched Villanelle fight. The seventh time her eyes have followed across the Colosseum dirt, fastened to the hot, quick form racing in the sun. The seventh time she's listened to Villanelle's name chanted through the crowds, its syllables in threes, loud and clipped and powerful.

The glint of the sword slices through the air and makes the gasps echo, first through herself, and then the audience. 

Elena jolts beside her, death-grip on her thigh.

There is crimson: all across the amphitheatre floor and in Villanelle's eyes, the colour reflected in her skirts, her smile manic, face smattered with blood beneath the pristine silver of her helmet. She yanks it off, throws down her shield and lifts her face to the sky.

Eve stares and stares.

Not a cloud in sight. Only merciless sweat and never-ending heat.

Eve feels her blood rush with adrenaline. It sits, thick and sour in the back of her throat, curdling still, when Villanelle's gaze falls to her, proud, searching.

Her heart stops.

" _Enough!_ " 

Eve fills with the sombre, familiar sound of it. The crowd simmers and then settles as Konstantin rises - a demi-God on his viewing balcony, flanked only by his wife and daughter, stoic by his side.

Even in shade, he glows, the white of his beard a speck of snow in Rome's dusty palette, a beacon of hope where his wife brings unease.

Villanelle waits. Eve can see her gasping, her armour see-sawing as she keeps a tight hold on her rival.

"Are you not entertained?" Konstantin bellows.

Elena gives Eve a wilting look.

Next to her sit Jess and Bill - life-boats in the sea of Eve's recent bereavement. They share her misery.

This was cruelty. This was blood-sport and it hurt Eve to see it, as much as it excited her. Losing Niko to war had been a devastation as well as bittersweet relief - the chance for freedom, a quiet widowed life with Bill to share her home, the time to learn and grow into herself.

To do it all again, though, would be unthinkable.

She doesn't hear Elena's words above the ringing in her head, voice muted by the ravenous crowd as it eats Konstantin alive.

He looks to Carolyn. She sits, poised and marred with displeasure.

Each silent, passing moment makes Villanelle's arm tremble, fist tight around her opponent's hair, cocking back the head to leave the jugulars exposed. She won't be able to hold much longer.

Eve imagines Konstantin on puppet strings, dragged from Constantinople through middle-Eastern desert, straight to Carolyn's watchful, waiting hold- a strained marriage at best.

Carolyn gives a single nod. Her mouth forms _pollice verse,_ like a mantra to the burbling crowd.

The bulk of Konstantin slumps, shoulders heavy with grief.

He holds out his thumb and waits for the verdict.

 _Kill, kill, kill._ Always.

Villanelle strains to hold down the gladiator's weight. Blood streams from his severed arm and abdomen. It pools in Villanelle's upturned shield, swirling in the light of day.

Konstantin's thumb swings down and Eve's stomach plummets. 

She hears it but doesn't see - the deathly silence, the whistle of the blade cut clean through flesh, the fall of the sword, the resounding cheers.

She'd witnessed a murder. Another. But despite the scattered bodies, the empty chariot, the animals strewn and gutted, Eve only looks at Villanelle, like she always does, and without a blink, sees her proudly and curiously, look right back.

These are the things Eve knows for certain:

1.

Villanelle is fury.

If someone took a knife and slowly undid the fibres of Villanelle's very existence, Eve swears she'd bleed wrath. Eve saw it in the way she fought, all steely determination and emptiness borne of hunger. Villanelle would set the world on fire, Eve's sure, and it wouldn't be a flicker to the flames roaring inside.

It was mesmerizing.

Eve liked to see how far that fury went, how many bodies fell to Villanelle's feet and just how quick. It hurt too, a deep, dampened twinge in the heart of Eve herself, knowing rage like that usually went hand-in-hand with pain. She'd spent countless nights searching Cassiopeia, praying to the Gods that Villanelle would find peace.

2.

Villanelle is one.

Born alone and destined to die the same.

There were stories Eve heard, in the market, at the baths, through grapevines and vineyards, spoken in hushed tones and echoing still, catching her off-guard in moments of calm:

Villanelle was of a different land, colder, farther than people cared to imagine. A child of snow, set sail for warmer seas and brought on the waves from the clutches of poverty. And her unlucky ship had dropped anchor in Konstantin's wandering eye, and she'd become its apple, protected, nurtured, then publically adored in the Colosseum and as far as the city stretched.

Still, Villanelle belonged to someone. Owned and loyal to a higher power, killing for herself but in Konstantin's name. Eve knew it tore her in two when her enemies couldn't. It split her apart, to have Irina roam the streets with her, forced company tucked at her side, hand in her own.

And yet.

Eve would catch a flash of that red, a flash of that smile, and wonder just how long yearning for solitude could really suit a person.

3.

Villanelle is lost. 

Eve's tried, over and over, and failed, to marry this with the knowledge that Villanelle knew Rome like the back of her hand.

But her hazel eyes speak true, windows to her soul painted olive in the summer and darker as the trees aged, and Eve sees them search, scowering the crowds, restless over the arch of her bow or the curve of her knife or the clench of her fist.

And her gaze falls to Eve, usually but not always, and makes her feel like she might just be that magnetic field, steady and beckoning, as Villanelle's arrow continues to spin.

So it's no surprise then, when it happens again in the peak of summer, one day in July.

"Best in town," Bill nods, reaching across the stall and tossing an apple in his hand, the juice sweet and ripe as it sticks to his chin, his smirk sly over the imprints of his teeth.

"I hope you're paying for that."

"Not a chance," he shrugs, "This country bleeds me dry, what's a few borrowed goods?" 

Eve rolls her eyes. "You're an academic. Be a good citizen."

Bill flashes with mischief and palms a few grapes, though the vendor - an old student - lets him off.

The market smells sweet, like overripe melon and honey. It's cast in light and shadow, filtered through cloth to create a warm prism all around Eve and her friends.

She finds it oddly beautiful in its mundanity.

Elena takes no note, busying herself by pointing Jess to the latest ship-full of prisoners drafted from the sea.

"The pecs."

"Shut up."

"The toosh."

" _Elena_."

"Whatever. Don't act like you're not _dying_ to see what's under that loin cloth."

The reverberating sound of a smack side-tracks Eve, and she finds Jess, pregnant and impassive, and Elena, clutching her arm but captivated by the rows of glistening, semi-nude bodies, shepherded through the gates. 

_Walking erotica_ , Eve would think, if it weren't for her complete disinterest. They'll be slaves soon, dying for their sins.

She thinks of Villanelle then, pictures her young and pale, skin taut over long bones as she'd taken her first steps on Roman soil.

She pictures her terrified and motherless, admired by men too old to be her father. Bid on. Sold. 

She pictures her growing through the years, fed on fear and watered with praise in Rome's training grounds, hidden and hardened beneath the earth where the sun doesn't touch.

She wishes she'd known her then. Wonders if things would be different now, had their orbits intertwined.

Instead, she admires from afar but thinks of her often, oddly protective of prying eyes other than her own.

"Do you miss it?" _Do you miss him?_

Elena's looking at her with her midnight hair and darker skin, the peach of her toga st`ark against her clavicles.

"I don't know."

"I do - sometimes," she shrugs, slipping her fingers between Eve's own to lead them down a clearing in the stalls, to a spot where everything's sharper and sweat begins to bead beneath the tangles of Eve's curls. "I miss the intimacy of it, you know? Having someone see you inside out. Really _know_ you. And love you despite the inconsistensies. Not to say that -" she laughs and Eve welcomes the sound, lovely in her ear, "I don't miss the sex - because I _do_ \- being thoroughly fucked, Eve, because - _God_ , Kenny is quiet but he bloody makes up for it in -"

" _Alright_ -"

"- the sack. Just - that feeling of being smothered by the weight of a man, there between your legs, hard and heavy and unstoppable and just - _everywhere_ , fucking _hell,_ " her eyes roll back.

Elena was unfulfilled. Having a lover at war for months on end could do that to a woman. And what was Elena, if not human, to let her interest roam, however briefly?

Except when she talks about passion, as though Kenny is her sole purpose for being, an obsession almost, Eve finds herself unable to relate.

She didn't want to be smotheted by anyone. Not any more.

Niko had been good to her. Reliable. Attentive. He'd left her wanting for nothing, put a roof over her head, held her, listened. 

And Eve had learned to love him, to play the obedient wife to his doting husband, joint by matrimony but little else.

Never had she experienced that volatile longing Elena constantly chased, or the adoration Jess spoke of, or the happiness she saw in Bill, who kept her home warm but not her bed, his nights reserved for broader shoulders and stronger arms.

She'd read it in books too, heard songs and poems written about that otherwordly love - a pure, blindless devotion - and she'd come to make peace with the fact that perhaps it was never intended for her.

She was too rough. Too grouchy where Niko demanded softness. Too wanting where he needed her patient. Too hungry where he'd just had enough and through it all, she'd been stifled and suppressed to the point of defeat.

"But yeah, yeah, romance is fine.... _Gross_ ," Elena cringes.

"Not all of us are self-made nynphomaniacs," Bill says helpfully as Jess directs them to a jewellery stall, taking Bill's attention and making Elena laugh.

"No, you're right. Some of us are flaming homosexuals," she grins and Bill turns flamboyantly, holding two blistering emerald earrings up against his poker-straight expression.

"You are _gorgeous_."

"Wait 'til you see my new tunic," he dead-pans, dropping the earrings and reaching for a men's copper medallion, Konstantin's powerful profile engraved right to the edges.

Eve doesn't get time to look.

She barely has time to answer Bill's question, soft and vague in the periphery of her conscience.

Past the thundering of her own pulse, she spots Villanelle, several yards ahead and strewn in light, breath-taking and cliché and Eve can't help but laugh harshly at the glorious way her body responds.

Villanelle is drenched in sun, bowed against the water fountain with soaked hands under dripping chin, her throat bobbing on each swallow as her tongue darts out to gather the stream.

It turns Eve all the way up, from the pleasant simmering warmth of old friends, to the hurtling tornado of fear and intrigue and intimidation and morbid curiosity, for this killer, this performer, this firebrand of a _woman._

She slips off-kilter.

She scrambles to throw herself back into conversation, to let it hush the storm inside her.

Still, she feels it all, she feels everything, her dormant emotions flaring like a bonfire, and she's ready, this time she is, finally, finally she's ready -

"Hello."

She's not. Not even slightly.

Villanelle is there. She's inches away now and Eve could reach out and they would touch.

She rattles with the thought. Swallows.

"Hi."

Villanelle looks at her with a small, knowing smile, uneasy around the edges but happy at heart, a déjà-vu-mirage, and Eve almost convinces herself that it might be, that her thoughts and dreams of Villanelle had finally manifest themselves in fleeting form.

She takes a step back and collides with a metal mirror.

The laugh is soft. Softer than Eve imagined. It's light and melodic, feminine, _pretty_ and she finds herself wanting to hear it on repeat.

She rights herself against Jess, whose glare goes unacknowledged, and tries again. "Hi."

Her friends fall away. The whole world does.

She's grateful and terrified, rooted in place by Villanelle's stare.

"You have already said that."

Eve sputters. 

_An introduction would be nice._

"Eve."

Villanelle quirks her brow, bemused, then makes a show of looking over her shoulder, then back to Eve, hand pressed to her chest.

"My name is Villanelle," she rectifies, arrogant. Eve wants the ground to open up.

"No, I know. Of course. _I'm_ Eve. I'm Eve - it's me."

Villanelle's mouth curves in a grin. There's no malice there, no disappointment, only a playfulness in her eyes that makes Eve flounder even as Villanelle remains lax, leant against a counter like it was made for her. 

"Nice to meet you, Eve."

Eve watches her mouth form the words and the sound of her own name there resonates like a thrill through her.

"Have we met before?"

Long fingers curl around material flung across a stand, the crimson cotton blending against that of Villanelle's palla, loose and easy as it hangs off her shoulder.

Eve follows its creases, up to the slant of a collarbone and into round, muscled shoulders, the light catching and sticking to an armlet around smooth skin.

She wasn't used to seeing Villanelle in a dress. Men's armour kept her complexion pale and hidden from Eve's eager view. And now that it was there for her perusal, Eve found herself wanting to discover every scar, to press into every bruise and trace her fingers until Villanelle stopped her.

She clears her throat and directs her attention to the clothing on display. 

She finds it easier to line up her words when Villanelle's colours aren't flooding her vision. "No - not really."

Villanelle considers her.

Eve can see her in the corner of her eye, touching her mouth in thought.

And then it clicks.

"Asian woman with amazing hair," she says softly and so unexpectedly, Eve's attention whirls right back.

"What?"

"That is what Irina calls you."

Eve feels her face turn hot.

"Konstantin's daughter."

Eve nods. She knows. Konstantin's rule began long before Villanelle's arrival, his family tree rooted firmly in the nation's mind.

"So now I will tell her to call you _Eve_ ," she nods. "It suits you."

"Uh - thank you. Tell her I said - hi?" she inflects, wincing. The thought that Irina and Villanelle spoke of her, ogled her, considered her, crosses her mind but she tries not to dwell, dwelling on Villanelle's form instead, wonderfully teasing.

"I will," Villanelle smirks. "Tell me, Eve. You have heard of the story of Eden?"

"Story of what?"

"Okay," Villanelle laughs at her, moving to circle the stall and peruse at her leisure. Eve falls into step. "It has come from Galilee."

She wasn't familiar with the place. She wonders if Villanelle was, wonders just how far she'd travelled and the things she'd been met by - the good and the bad.

She stays close, chasing Villanelle's shadow, captivated.

"Tell me."

"The locals will not shut up about a prophet in Nazareth. Very popular. Very - _dramatic,_ " the word curls, nestled inside Villanelle's teeth. "He is pretending to know the beginning of the world."

"Prometheus," Eve points out as if it weren't up for debate. For the Roman empire, the origin story was rooted in Prometheus, and for Eve, it formed the basis of her entire belief system.

"Yes, you would think," Villanelle's eyes flash incredulously. "So. This very popular _drama queen_ says the world has been created by one God. All people, made from one man, Adam, and a woman. From his rib," she dead-pans and Eve almost laughs, but then - "Her name is Eve."

The story made little sense. Eve would point out its flaws but Villanelle has said her name, again, and she lets herself get lost in its sweet, rough sound.

_Say it again_ , she thinks.

She hums instead. "Why is she so important?"

"Oh, she was very naughty," Villanelle says mysteriously, then laughs at the placid look Eve must give her. Every time she tries to add flare to her story, Eve finds herself on the verge of nervous, amused laughter. "You see, Eve, one beautiful Sunday morning, a serpent slid down from a forbidden apple tree."

_Ah yes, the forbidden tree_ , Eve thinks and rolls her eyes.

"Yes, yes, I agree. _So_. It tempted Eve to sin, to steal from paradise. And she did."

Villanelle looks like she's dying to finish the story so Eve concedes. Excitement looked good on her and her caricature way of story-telling was so mismatched to her blood-drenched ego, Eve found it incredibly endearing.

"Let me guess - struck down by Jupiter?"

Villanelle tosses the material away and picks up another, holding it up to Eve's fidgeting form.

"No. Jupiter doesn't live there."

"Where?"

"The Garden of Eden."

" _Ah_."

"Yes," Villanelle grins. "Naughty Eve convinced Adam to share the apple - _temptation_ ," she winks. "The God - he is also very dramatic - threw a temper tantrum and sent them both away, to Earth."

"That's a little - anticlimactic." 

A shadow passes over Villanelle's face, unexpected but heavy in her eyes. It happens so fast, Eve almost loses her footing. She wants to back-track, to reassure Villanelle that the story was well told, despite it's far-fetched message.

"Do you like it here, Eve?"

She sighs. Looks around.

She'd walked these roads all her life, hand in her father's and later in Niko's. Life had been kind to her, albeit mundane. A quiet, predictable path that she'd followed dutifully, unstirred, unchallenged, scattered with small tragedies but sheltered overall.

She hadn't known much else.

She chooses diplomacy. "I don't - hate it." Did she?

"Would you like it more than paradise?"

"Paradise doesn't exist." 

Villanelle hums non-committally.

Eve watches her, shoulders low with unease.

Of course Villanelle would yearn for paradise, on Earth or beyond, who wouldn't? For her, hell - the loose, nebulous meaning of it - had been a reality, from girl to soldier with no softness in between, only battle and blood and things not meant for children.

Eve instantly floods with guilt to think otherwise. She pictures herself with Villanelle's life in her hands like a book, ready to be thumbed through from start to end and God, how she'd happily lose herself in it.

"I think - I think there's _way_ too much to unpack in that story but - I don't think I believe in any of it. Do you?"

Villanelle's eyes lift to hers, green the way Eve likes. "Which part?"

"That there's a higher singular power. Paradise. Whatever the opposite of that is. I believe the Gods watch over us, but our destiny's our own."

The answer seems to please Villanelle, who nods, once, finally, that playful quirk returning to her mouth. "Yes. I like to think the same."

Eve grows bold at this. She watches Villanelle's calloused hands trip over the various sewing materials - thread, cotton, linen, leather. They're gentle as they go, long and careful, patient. Eve's so used to seeing them wrapped around throats, stuck in her opponents' wounds.

She takes a deep breath and folds her arms across her chest. "So, which am I?"

Villanelle's eyebrows rise.

"The temptress, or the sinner?"

It felt like they were no longer strangers. Like Villanelle knew her already, well enough to pick the answer, accurately and without doubt. She finds it disconcerting, just how much learning the way Villanelle ran, moved, jumped, killed, actually meant learning her.

How much had Villanelle learned of her, from the way she sat, watched, waited?

"I haven't decided yet," Villanelle says casually. "But you are very distracting," she points out, "with your friends and your laugh and - that _hair_..."

Eve scoffs. Her hands automatically move to scoop her curls off her damp shoulders and into a bun, but Villanelle has her before she can, palm cool to the inside of her wrist, holding her in place.

"No - wear it down."

She lets her arms drop.

Villanelle licks her lips, staring with a hunger Eve knew well, though now it's just an iteration, softer and calmer than in the battle arena. "Okay. Maybe I have my answer."

Eve tips her chin, frustrated when there's no follow-up.

She already knows what it is.

She watches Villanelle as she picks up the material from before, the one she'd held up to Eve, berry-red and dripping in her hands. She exchanges coins with the vendor, gifting Eve her purchase.

"For you."

"Oh - no, it's fine, really, I don't need - I wasn't planning on - I can _absolutely_ pay for - " She's mortified. Niko's death, however bleak and unexpected, had brought with it a silver lining - a home in her name, an orchard, freedom to work for herself.

Eve's house stood barely half a mile out from the baths. It stood in shade, often, but sometimes in the sun, where her trees would sprout figs and pears and apples, the summer soil black as her hair, and paler in the cooler months.

She liked the smells it kept - herbs in the day, jasmine in the evenings. She liked the clack of horse hooves, the way the stones felt, hot under her hands.

She had things. Plenty of them.

She acknowledged them proudly, coveting her independence above all else. Gifts from old friends were easy to welcome, but from new ones - was that what Villanelle was now? - were harder.

"To thank you," Villanelle insists, pushing it sweetly into Eve's arms. "For cheering me on."

She feels her chest begin to ache. Wonders how many times Villanelle had spotted her in the crowd, if not every, putting on a show just for her.

She wants to say something smart, something like, _How do you know it's you I'm cheering?_ but Villanelle's smoothing her braid off her shoulder and her signet ring gleams against it and Eve catches herself staring, following the contours of her bruised knuckles and blonde hair, gold as the barley fields drying in the sun, and it ignites something in her, ignites more when Villanelle asks:

"Do you like to watch?"

_Yes. No. Yes. What?  
_

"Or do you like to be watched?"

She feels a lump form in her throat. Her stomach curls. Villanelle blinks at her, deathly serious, until a cackle bursts from her and loosens all of Eve's anxiety.

She keeps her voice steady and clutches her gift to her chest like armour. "Both."

Villanelle makes a point to look at her, as if to say, _I like watching you too._ Then her eyes dart towards the sundial in the market square and fill with apology.

"I have to go. I hope to see you again, Eve."

"Oh - right." She ignores the way her stomach sinks.

"There is a big game tomorrow. I hope you will come."

_I wouldn't miss it for the world._

"I will."

"I am going to win, of course - I am the best gladiator in Rome, so it will be very _boring_ , but -"

Eve laughs. "And humble."

"It is hard, when I am amazing," Villanelle winks. "It is a burden, really."

"Sure it is."

"I want you to see it, when I am the last one standing. I will win this one for you. Promise."

Before she has a chance to respond, overwhelmed at the gesture, Villanelle's off, footprints left by her sandals on the dusty ground, the red of her disappearing into the bustling afternoon crowd, Eve's gift the only lasting token of their meeting.

She buries her nose in it and wonders what Villanelle would smell like.

The material lingers with notes of lavender and earth.

When she lifts her head, Jess is gawking across the road and Elena too, though she wears a dirty grin to match Bill's own, one Eve knows she'll spend the rest of the day avoiding in favour of thinking about tomorrow, and what it would bring.

The crowd writhes, with heat and expectation. Not a single seat goes unfilled and Eve stares, appalled and morbidly fascinated, at the young children in the audience, mothers with babies bound tight across their chests, the elderly, the sick.

It seemed all of Rome was here to attend. To witness the reigning champion, the transformation of the games into something sinister, a challenge never brought forth before.

The Colosseum ground lays raised. The dust had been brought up into stone, crumbling walls of it to form a make-shift labyrinth, narrow and winding, coiling into itself in yellows and greys.

Eve had never seen anything like it. She watches the rink fill with silver bodies, the trap doors opening to release the Gladiators in quick, angry floods.

They will fight on foot, armed only with shields and swords, some with bow-and-arrows, some with nothing.

Villanelle stands calm in the chaos of it all.

She wears a helmet with steel leaves adorning the sides. They look delicate but Eve knows they're unbreakable, and she thinks the same of Villanelle herself, her braid curled beneath her armour, sandals laced up below her knees, battle skirts crimson and clean and bound to end in tatters.

Eve feels her panic swell.

The fight goes unannounced. Just the blare of the horn like a cry, and then a mad collision of bodies, some falling to the ground in minutes.

Most of the opponents fight in chariots or on horseback. The winding structure of the labyrinth leaves little space to drive or manoeuvre, which Eve is glad for, allowing Villanelle space to slip her body into angles and corners where artillery won't fit.

Her eyes don't leave Villanelle.

Even when the walls swallow her up, Eve swears she can hear the sound of her, her heavy, panting breath, the clink of her sword, her feet scraping sand and rock.

She lets Elena squeeze her hand and chases any glimpse she can get.

She watches the chariots fall to pieces.

Watches the animals fall in exhaustion.

Watches Villanelle's army fall one-by-one, limbless and lifeless and lonely.

She wonders how many soldiers had family to root for them, to wait for them and urge them with a limitless kind of love. And for those that had it, she wonders if it helped.

She says a quick prayer to Mars and waits for Villanelle's shadow to be the last in the sun, the weight of her armour discarded to the floor as she plunges a knife into the man whose hips straddle her, hands around her neck.

The body caves in at her side - the body of a half-man half-beast, a faceless warrior whose upper half carried the carcass of a bull, head and horns towering. Eve imagines its stifling stench and wonders how anyone could stand a fighting chance inside it.

The crowd erupts.

Villanelle doesn't smile. Not this time.

Eve's on her feet in seconds, but not in celebration. Only in fear, Villanelle's anxiety palpable despite a vicious applause.

Konstantin rises as Villanelle does the same. His toga gleams in the midday light, his eyes sad and important despite the mountain of him.

"Today marks a very special victory."

Elena slumps, and Bill beside her. Jess remains seated, her arms protective around her unborn child.

"We send our undefeated Gladiator to new lands!"

The world begins to fizz then, crackling with static inside Eve's temples, blurring around the edges of her vision. She feels her sweat turn cool, accrid under her arms and between her thighs. She heaves with nausea.

"Villanelle," he motions.

Villanelle drops her sword. Makes long, heavy strides to the podium. Steps up to be lifted above the carnage around her, high enough for Eve to see her exhausted face, mouth down-turned and cheeks beautifully flushed.

"Our Greek brothers ask for our support. Crete is in ruins. The people are ravaged by a new enemy, untouched by the Empire."

Bill gives no sign of understanding.

Eve had read stories. Her nation had been fed and grown on Roman myth and legend. Most never lived long enough to discover them true, but Eve was sensible enough to heed the common evils, and smart enough to fear them. What lived beyond their seas?

The Roman empire had held Greece in its golden fist long before her father's time, long before stories of Eden and Paradise. Still, the Mediterranean continued to struggle, even under stronger rule.

"They ask for our best warrior. Somebody ruthless, unafraid and undefeated. A warrior to finish the cannibal that haunts the island."

A coin is tossed at Villanelle's feet.

Eve burns with longing to see it. She only catches the golden glimpse of it as it lays between Villanelle's delicate fingers. No doubt an engraving of who she was to kill.

"You will fight the bull, Villanelle. The minotaur. And you will live or die. Your destiny is your own. If you are victorious, you will return with the head. And to your freedom."

Eve's knees bounce now. Elena's palm holds them steady but Eve feels like the ground might split wide open.

"And if you are to fail, your name will live on in memory, engrained in the heart of all of Rome."

Eve sobs. She pushes a palm into her chest. Wills the ache there to settle, the hole that Villanelle would leave behind.

Villanelle's eyes flash. She pockets the coin. She nods, once, sombre, and finally lifts her face, her melancholy stark above the small, determined smile on her lips.

Eve knew immortality would be attractive. In death, Villanelle would be remembered for eternity, her name celebrated and worshipped for generations to come. She would no longer be a slave, forced to fight to see another day.

But in living, Villanelle was promised true freedom - the chance at life and not just survival. The chance at things worth living for: walks in the city, unflanked; ripe fruit and riper wine; the sound of song; the choice to dress however she pleased, to dive and swim and sink into lakes and baths and love - to love, to fall in love, to be in love. To love another. To be loved.

Losing Villanelle would mean severing the string to everything Eve had found herself longing for. And her longing had barely taken root.

"I will return, Konstantin," Villanelle shouts over the enraptured crowd and she directs her fielty to him but her gaze turns, unwavering and full of energy, as she finds Eve in her place. "I will do it for you."

The words ring, harrowing, filling Eve to the brim, and she rides on that effervescent feeling long after the Colosseum empties, long after night falls and the stars come and the only sound is that of the cicadas, Bill's snoring and Villanelle's voice, full of promises Eve prays she'll keep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come tweet me at @vracs1 for fic updates, polls and general chitchat!


	2. Parting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading - I know this is a bit out there, glad people are enjoying it!

//

The heat bleeds into autumn.

Eve sits in the shade of the towering columns and watches Villanelle train.

Her muscles ripple, each press-up quick and violent.

She hardly knows where to look - her eyes fall on Villanelle's legs, to the ridges of her calves and up across quivering hamstrings, the curve of her gluts slipping into the smooth dip of her back and lifting to the expanse of her shoulders where Irina sits like a loaded weight.

Villanelle growls.

"You are too _fat_."

Irina grunts stubbornly, sinking her tiny self further between shoulder blades until Villanelle's arms buckle and she collapses.

Eve stands.

"You are too _stupid_ ," Irina shouts, throwing her hands in the air when Eve moves to help Villanelle off the ground.

She's quick to dust herself off, patting the sand off her clothes and kicking Irina behind the knees so she stumbles.

"Shut up your tiny stinking ass."

"I am not stinky!"

Villanelle's eyes flash mischievously and make Eve laugh as the two bicker.

Villanelle loomed over Irina with an overwhelming sense of intimidation completely lost on the little girl. It amazed Eve - how much fight she had in her, her vowels curled deep like Konstantin's, and her snarl, like her mother's. She made a worthy spar-mate, if Villanelle's sweat-drenched tunic was anything to go by.

Eve clears her throat.

Villanelle's eyes follow the sound, mouth softening into a smile as she smacks Irina across the back of the head.

"Go away."

Irina's only persuaded by Eve's quiet look, pleading for some time alone, a chance to sneak away and seek shade in the olive orchard.

"She is the worst."

"She's a gladiator," Eve laughs, "like you."

"No she isn't," Villanelle makes a face. Her eyes fall to her bruised hands, the palms scraped, knuckles scattered with circles like indigo.

Eve wants to reach out and take them in her own, to run them under cool river water and bathe them in balm.

She lets herself be guided to the wilting trees without being touched, though their hands brush as they fall in step.

There's a cut, like shattered glass, just above Villanelle's lip. Eve tries to date it. Wonders if spending time with Villanelle will eventually teach her to guess the age of each bruise, every scar, every split in Villanelle's smooth skin.

She swallows and lowers to the ground, folding her knees beneath her.

Villanelle sprawls. She settles against the bark, legs wide and stretched out in front of her.

The evening wind rustles the auburn leaves and Villanelle picks one up, crushing it in her hand.

"What does it feel like?"

Villanelle lifts her head.

Eve had seen hazel like that once before - in childhood, when her father had taken her to Tivoli, the gardens rough and untamed with exotic flowers Eve wished she'd taken home and kept. Seeing it replicated in Villanelle's eyes throws her into such nostalgia, it takes her breath away.

"What does what feel like?"

Eve winces into the horizon.

The sun warms her, just enough.

The landscape shimmers in the late light.

The city looks insignificant from their vantage point and compared to Villanelle, who saturates her vision and lives and breathes right beside her.

"To fight."

"To survive," Villanelle corrects, shrugging. Her fingers tickle the grass beneath.

Eve's heart aches. "Okay." 

"Good," she smiles, yanking up a handful of weeds. "Living is good."

Eve feels mirth pull at her cheeks. "What do you live for?"

Villanelle lets her head thud against the tree trunk. The silhouette of the branches race across her face. Eve could put her fingers there and see how many she could catch.

She too, is being watched, with such care, such fondness, she wonders just what Villanelle thinks of her.

"What do _you_ live for, Eve?"

"My friends," she says without hesitation. "My freedom. You?"

"Normal stuff. The chance at a nice life. Cool house. Fun job," she bites sarcastically and Eve would laugh if it weren't so tragic. "Someone to go to the baths with."

"You don't have those things."

"No. Irina doesn't count," Villanelle folds her arms across her chest. "Maybe I will. Someday."

It comes out soft, hopeful.

Eve leans closer. "Someday soon, by the looks of things," she points out gently.

Villanelle lets the story unfold: the long, mapped journey by ship to Crete, the plan thereafter, the inevitable battle, the enemy that awaits.

It's almost palpable, the way Villanelle describes it - a towering walking nightmare, eyes like quicksand, a gaping, bottomless pit of a mouth, starved and frightening, muscle upon muscle upon impeachable flesh that hundreds had tried and failed to tear down. 

Eve will dream of it. In the coming winter and spring months, she will let it consume her every waking moment and then let it crawl in bed with her and eat her alive.

She shivers.

"What do you feel - when you kill someone?"

A laugh.

The sun gleams off Villanelle's teeth.

"Nothing."

"Nothing," Eve says flatly.

"Nothing," Villanelle shrugs her eyebrows. "Angry. Maybe. Impatient. Bored. Mostly - nothing."

The words send a chill that settles in the pit of her stomach. She watches Villanelle's fingers climb across the space between them, so gentle against her cutting words. They rest in the grass, inches from Eve's knee.

"You don't feel _anything_?"

Villanelle's impassive, but kind. She softens her posture. "I think I would not be very good at my job if I felt things, Eve."

It disappointed her, more than she thought it would. Villanelle's humanity, the tender edges to her so seldom seen, seemed just out of reach now as she explains that she's never known anything else. She'd been malleable at a young age, shaped and chiseled for survival.

There's something about the way Villanelle looks at her that's so incongruous with battle-Villanelle, it leaves Eve swamped in conflict.

"Do you like it?"

"It pays the tax," Villanelle jokes again. Eve nudges her affectionately. "Yes. I do. I like - the victory," she says carefully, "the glory. The guts," she grins, "but - we all want a nice life, Eve, don't we? Don't you? You have a nice life."

Eve scrunches her nose. _Nice_. It seemed so lackluster, coming from Villanelle and her tornado of an existence.

"I don't want nice."

"No?"

The silence stretches. Eve lets it.

"You don't like your friends?"

"Of course."

"What do you want, then?"

A lump rises in her throat. It starts to pulse, aching as it does. She turns to Villanelle to see a darkness there, patient and challenging and just on the wrong side of sweet.

She scrapes a hand through her hair. Doesn't miss the way Villanelle's breath sticks.

"So many things."

"Tell me."

She finally has her answer - Villanelle smells like cinnamon and sandalwood. She's close enough for Eve to indulge, to sink into her deep, alluring warmth. She can almost see it coming off her skin like waves, the sweat dried to her neck and forearms.

"Adventure."

Villanelle's eyes sparkle.

"Someone to challenge me. To fight with me."

Villanelle looks like she's struggling not to say, _I am an excellent fighter_ , maybe something just as obnoxious, the quip bit back behind her teeth.

"To show me new places. To tell me when I'm being an asshole. My friends do - _believe_ me, but - that's different."

"Yes. Irina tells me. All of the time."

"You should keep her around. She'll be good for your enormous ego."

"She is a dick."

"Takes one to know one," Eve says sharply.

For a moment, she wonders if she might pay for it, the image of Villanelle pouncing on her, pinning her to the ground in retaliation, stark and welcome in her mind's eye.

Villanelle only sits, incredulous and entertained.

"You are not married."

It's a blow.

Villanelle realises too late, her face sinking when Eve doesn't reciprocate, her hand moving into her lap, scalded.

"Sorry."

"No," Eve says softly, "you're fine."

She unfolds her knees and brings them up, hugging them to her chest. When she rests her chin on top of them, Villanelle scoots to do the same.

Their elbows touch.

Eve inhales the scent of her skin and the sleek heaviness of drying olive above them. "I was."

Villanelle twitches. "Oh."

"Niko's - he was a good soldier."

"Oh. Eve - _Shit_."

"It's - I mean, it's not like you killed him."

"Do you - did you - " Villanelle's eyes flicker across her face. She licks her mouth. It forms words, but no sound comes.

"Love him?"

"Miss him. But - yes."

It was back - that discomfort Eve was old friends with.

Thinking of Niko, alive and in death, had always left her feeling like a jug half-empty.

The idea of losing him should have stirred panic inside her, inspired a craziness and an unshakeable devastation. And when it became a reality and the feelings never materialized, it left her with a permanent sense of guilt, convinced that she was broken in some way.

"I - don't know."

Villanelle nods slowly. She purses her lips together, cheek dimpling as she looks to Eve sympathetically. "We can't know everything."

Villanelle was right. Except there were new things Eve knew with absolute clarity, ones that terrified and called to her, begging her to chase after until they were finally hers.

The snow scatters like cherryblossom petals, settling where footfall can't.

Villanelle's body hits the ground.

Eve starts to tremble - familiar with the routine, by now, but still rattled - watching as Villanelle's opponent's fist collides with her cheek.

The two grapple, Villanelle's frame smaller, softer, pressed and moulded into the wet earth. Her feet kick out beneath the broad figure, knee colliding with rib and then a sharp crunch and harsh wail as the man topples like a pile of bones. 

Villanelle pants as she mounts him. Earns another elbow to her stomach, a squeeze of fingers around her neck. Knuckles crack with the underside of her chin and she wobbles, swaying backwards for a few dizzying moments.

Eve's fists shake.

_It wasn't real. It was play. Practice._

But it looked real, and it felt real, Eve was sure, from the way Villanelle struggles to stay conscious, blood gushing from her mouth, her eye beginning to swell shut above the mottled pattern of her jaw.

She holds her breath as Villanelle throws herself against her spar mate, using new found strength to hurt him.

Her eyes gleam matte, mouth feral and tight. Eve sees the fury there, plain as day. It's unsettling and gorgeous, and she hugs arms around herself to stop the terrifying thrill that shoots through her.

Villanelle grunts as she shoves her forearm into his neck.

The blood vessles begin to swell and bulge.

She uses her free hand to push against his eyes, blinding him.

"I will skin your whole family alive!" she shrieks. "Don't _fucking_ move!"

That morning, Eve had watched her snap the wrist of a girl clean in half, her brown eyes wet and startled as her face had crumpled into agony and Villanelle had walked away, no more than a glance thrown, as Eve had learned, at Nadia and her pleading cries.

She'd watched Villanelle work punches into the hanging body of a pig, produce a blade and slice right down the belly, entrails warm and pink and glistening in the cold.

She'd watched Villanelle work her way out of dozens of dangers with a savage cruelty Eve couldn't quite look away from.

And now.

Now she watches the man's face turn crimson and then blue, his hand smacking at the ground in defeat as Villanelle releases, scrambling free. She collapses several feet away, eyes falling shut with relief.

Eve runs to her.

The man collects himself, kneeling to pat Villanelle on the shoulder with a soft _very nice_ , then giving Eve an apologetic smile as he limps off to recover.

Mud coats most of Villanelle's skin.

The soil's frosted.

The cold bites at Eve's bones, even as she lowers herself to Villanelle's side.

She looks at peace - gaze up to the firelight, the dark sky starry and open to greet her.

Eve shrugs off her winter-wear and coaxes Villanelle to sit up, to curl with her beneath the fur and leather.

"You don't have to - "

"Shh. You're welcome," Eve says gently.

"My things are - " she points by the fire beacons where the rest of her gear sits, spoiled and shrivelled in the unforgiving snow.

"Are you alright?"

Villanelle blinks. Specks of dirt sit just beneath her eyes. They run into long, lilac bruises at her jaw and side of her face like dye in water. Eve touches her there and feels her flinch, skittish like an animal.

Eve's used to seeing her in tiger-form, prowling inside her gladiator grounds, ferocious with adrenaline. With Eve, she's still cat-like, delicate and alert, but evasive with self-preservation.

Her hand drops.

"Sorry. It - " she tries and then laughs at the stretch of awkwardness between them, "just looks like it _really_ fucking hurts."

Villanelle's throat bobs as she swallows. Her eye is glassy - the one Eve can make out.

Her mouth trembles - from the cold or from something else, Eve doesn't spend too much time lingering over, but it trembles, and there's blood there, bright and red as Villanelle's imaginary apple.

Eve throws caution to the wind and tries again. "I can clean that up for you. I'm quite good at it, actually, we could take care of it."

Villanelle's face changes again, skirting into a vulnerability Eve's grown attached to.

"It does sting a bit."

Eve hums.

The wind ruffles the fur trim as Villanelle turns her cheek against it.

"Back-alley medical care then," she jokes, "and wine. I think we need wine."

Villanelle brightens, and this time, when Eve moves to squeeze her hand, she makes no move to resist.

Eve's house is warm.

The flames play across the walls as Villanelle sits beside them, drying.

Her hair hangs loose around her shoulders, the tips wet and the rest soft, clean like gold.

Eve watches her silently. She tries to put to memory the minutiae of her: the way her beauty spots align in threes, the gentle dip of her Cupid's bow, the sound of her laugh melodic and easy, her sprawling fingers as they wrap around the clay drinking pot.

"You are looking, Eve, but - you don't want to talk to me?" Villanelle teases.

Eve had talked. Talked as she'd cleaned Villanelle's wounds with vinegar, whisper-soft words to soothe away the pain. Talked as she'd spread honey over open cuts to seal them shut, shushing Villanelle's attempts to pull free. Talked as she'd explained the origins of arnica and how it grew in her garden, how lovely it smelt as it turned to oil and finally soaked into Villanelle's skin.

And Villanelle had stared and obeyed, pliant in Eve's hands.

She had her roar back now - bolstered with alcohol and dressed in dry clothes.

"I don't really know where to start," she feels her cheeks flush, so she takes another gulp and eyes Villanelle over the rim.

"I can start."

"Yeah?"

The idea that Villanelle wanted to know things about her - it sent her flying.

"Tell me about your childhood."

Eve laughs. "You don't waste time."

Villanelle stretches in her seat, pleased with herself, playful and expectant and comfortable as she settles to hear Eve's story. "I want to know the things that matter."

Eve does - she lets the hours stretch into late night as she tells Villanelle of her father, the origins of her family uprooting from the Hans and moving further West. She talks about growing up Roman but feeling like an outsider, about Bill and Elena and Jess and Niko, who she tries to gloss over, though Villanelle still asks her plenty.

All the while, Villanelle listens, riveted. She nods and hums and laughs, the sounds light, teasing things out of Eve she'd kept unturned for years on end.

When the wine runs empty, Eve makes a platter and brings fruit and cheese.

The moon hovers fat above the land and drenches it in silvers. It sits pretty against Villanelle's smooth skin, even as she eats feverishly and with little finesse Eve's endeared by.

The plate empties in seconds and Eve laughs as she tops it up.

She thought about Villanelle all the time: about the things she wore and did, who she trained with, what friends she had, what she ate before fighting and how she bathed, what happened in her family. She thought about Villanelle's eyes and her mouth, what she felt when she killed someone, what she had for breakfast.

She wanted to know everything, and little domestic glimpses like this - of Villanelle scoffing down her food, gulping her wine - formed pieces of the puzzle.

"Sorry," Villanelle says noisily around a peach.

The juice drips. Eve chides her.

Around sticky mouthfuls, Eve discovers Villanelle's upbringing, the gaps filled with vague memories of traversing oceans and wood, of family left behind. She finds out that Konstantin, large and distant, nurtured a love for Villanelle that few were privy too.

"He is a big, soft bear. We are the same - both of us, we have been brought to a city that will never be home, even with power and rule and victory. You know, he calls me his little sausage?"

Eve bursts into giggles. "Get out."

"Sure," Villanelle shrugs. "I am his favourite. It should be Irina, but really - it is me," she nods proudly, dusting off her hands and sticking her fingers in her mouth to clean them.

It's seductive and sweet, how haphazardly it happens and Eve stares, laughing still.

Villanelle's voice drops an octave as she adopts a heavy look. "He says, _Oksana, my little sausage, don't be so naughty."_

"I mean - he's not wrong."

"I am not naughty!"

"No," Eve rubs her chin, looking pointedly at the dishevelled table and the mess of stains and crumbs and disarray nestled inside Villanelle's lap. "So - Oksana -" she says gently, "is that your name? Your real name."

"The one my mother gave me. I don't like to use it."

"Why not?"

"It is complicated," she sighs. She rests the plate on the table and leans closer to the fire.

"Okay."

Something inside her sinks. She joins Oksana in the heat, careful not to sit too close.

The balance was hard to navigate, with Villanelle's moods shifting like the sundial - often bright, but sometimes shaded, and always quick to keep Eve on her toes.

"It reminds me of home. Rome is - home, sure. I do not remember much of before but - it doesn't feel good, to use it. In a place where there is only violence and war and pain. It doesn't - belong."

"You don't think there's any respite from it all?"

Oksana licks her lips. She smiles a small smile, nods once. "Sometimes. Sometimes with you, there is."

Eve feels her hands shake. Her palms grow damp, even as she brushes them against her palla.

"You're always welcome here, I hope you know that."

"For respite?"

"For anything," Eve says confidently, and she means it with all her heart.

"And you will protect me," she teases.

"Physically? No," she chuckles, lifting her arm to flex her bicep, and then shaking her head, "absolutely not."

"I understand," Villanelle says carefully.

Eve doesn't have to explain, doesn't have to make very clear that she would go to great lengths to protect Villanelle, and physically too, if that's what it came down to.

There were plenty of ways to nurture a person though, and physicality or not, Eve knew the things she was good at - comfort and patience and persistence, and those things were for the taking, should Villanelle ever need them.

Spring is slow to break.

The first splash of yellow on the ground brings a strange mix of joy for longer days, and dread for things to come.

Eve had spent most of December and January wrapped up in Villanelle's universe, the bitter cold dampened by the fear-heat of watching her fight, and the thrill-heat of watching her win.

Villanelle's bruises had faded with time until Villanelle wasn't Villanelle at all, slowly blooming, like the daffodils on Eve's patio, into Oksana.

The name had felt jagged in Eve's mouth to begin, but she'd used it more and more - by the frozen lake sometimes, when Oksana's guard was at its weakest, and sometimes after a fight, when she was delirious with success, and often in moments of quiet spent together, in Eve's dining room or outside of the training grounds, under the stars.

The cover of night felt safe.

She watches Oksana pick at a flower and offer it up flirtatiously.

"Am I charming you?"

"Yes," Eve laughs, taking it. She tucks it behind her ear, bright and beautiful in her dark hair.

Oksana flashes with pleasure. "Will you miss me?"

The words sit heavy on the April breeze. Eve has the sudden urge to let herself go, to sink to her knees on the steps of her porch and beg, _don't leave, you don't have to leave, stay with me!_

Some stories, like this one, were written for the Gods, and Eve knew not to meddle, as much as her heart wanted it.

"Yes."

"How much?"

She swallows. Oksana looks sombre but hopeful. "More than you know."

Pleased, Oksana leans back against her forearms and considers the birds overhead, their careless mocking sing-song of freedom.

"Eve."

" _Oksana_."

Oksana makes a face. "Who is your God?"

Eve had many. She'd inherited some - from her parents and generations before them. Some from her friends who inspired her to broaden her horizons.

Mostly, she prayed to Mars.

As a pacifist, Eve recognised the irony, but Mars brought bountiful harvests and a stable home life, and so left little to be questioned.

She tells Oksana this, unsurprised with her smugness.

"That should be my God, no?"

"Go figure."

"That is very funny." After a moment of Eve staring expectantly, Oksana chuckles. "Venus."

"No."

"Yes. I think somebody up there made a very big mistake."

Eve follows her gaze to the sky, then scuffs her sandal against the gravel.

"I guess you'll be needing her...she might have a good day and give you a victory. I'll be praying."

Oksana colours. She pins Eve's gaze with her own, voice thick when she says, "And other things."

"Hmm. Beauty."

"Yes," Oksana tips her head playfully to flick her hair, "thank you, Eve, she already has," she jokes, then says softly, "But there are other things, big, important things."

Eve sees her eyes widen.

"Desire," she says, voice thick but gentle. "Fertility. Sex. Love."

Eve lets the words linger.

She finds herself warmed by them instead of frazzled.

Oksana says it carefully, with longing instead of demand, and was that - promise?

"I want to give you something."

She stares down at Oksana's hands, her pretty fingers where her ring sits. It comes off with a few quick spins, scratched but intricate, sitting against Oksana's lifeline.

"What does it say?"

" _The important thing is not what they think of me,_ _but what I think of them._ "

It's hard to accept - the gift, and the words. So much of Oksana's life had depended on Rome's adoration of her, their devotion, as fickle as it usually was.

The letters sit beautifully engraved in cursive on the gold, oval signet, and Oksana pushes it into her hand, cradling her fist tightly. "Keep it."

"I - this is - and you keep giving me - "

"You can give it back to me. When I return."

It's said with absolute, unwavering clarity, Eve almost believes it.

She wants to give a piece of herself too, something to remind Oksana of her on the long sail to Crete, something to carry and use to keep her safe.

"Hang on."

She'd thought about it - the idea of sending Oksana off with a parting gift, a saccharine gesture at best, but now that Oksana had done it first -

She returns with her hairpin and string, red like the cloth Oksana had given her, red like her battle dress, red like Eden's fruits and the leaves and Oksana's wounds.

"Here."

Oksana bites at her mouth. She fingers the pin, its pretty blues and greens the embodiment of spring. The end is sharp, carved to a precarious point. Oksana presses it against her fingertip and smiles.

"This is beautiful. Really. Thank you, Eve."

"The string's uh - a bit abstract, I know, but I figured - I don't know -" she shrugs, "might come handy in the labyrinth? You could tie it to the start or something - maybe - let it try and guide you -"

"Back to the start," Oksana nods. She winds it against her fingers like silk, and then around Eve's wrist so they're tethered. "You _are_ a romantic, Eve. You are very sappy."

"Nope."

"I like it. I like this, with you. I let you call me what you like and I like it."

Eve lets the string wind further, against the signet ring newly placed on her little finger, around her knuckles like blood. Oksana dips her head and kisses her there.

Her heart soars.

She watches Oksana's mouth traverse to her pulse point, dissolving into a smile at the speed with which it beats. Her lips are dry and warm. Her eyes are dark when she looks up, full of play and curiosity.

Eve turns her hand to cup her cheek. A kiss lands to the base of her thumb.

"Do you believe in the afterlife?"

"Yes. Of course. Don't you?"

"Yes," Oksana says solemnly. She straightens, patting her lap. When there's no explanation, she tugs, urging Eve to rest her head there, to spill her hair all over her thighs and steps.

Oksana looks odd at that angle, but still beautiful, silhouetted by the sky behind her. Eve can mostly make out her eyes, always focussed, and the high rounds of her cheeks.

"It is not so bad to die."

Fingers scrape along her scalp. Eve's soothed by it, but not by the conversation.

"Yes it is."

"I could see my mother. She has been waiting for me."

Eve curls closer. The ground is hard beneath her but its negated by Oksana's body, her stomach pressed to Eve's face, her hands everywhere at once. She wraps her arms around Oksana's waist and nestles in tight.

"She'll have to wait a little longer."

"Do you think so?"

"I'm afraid she'll have to wait a very, very long time," she says and her voice shakes, soaked with something she can't name. It makes her eyes hurt.

Oksana fists her hair tighter, tugging her up.

"But if she doesn't -"

"She'll have to."

"But if she doesn't," Oksana rasps, full of emotion. "If she doesn't -"

Eve feels her breath, sweet and hot against her nose and chin. It's quick.

Oksana's pupils shine big, their bottomless black swallowing the iris whole. Eve would miss the colour if it weren't for how hooded Oksana's gaze is, tongue brief against her bottom lip.

She steadies herself, one hand on Oksana's shoulder, and lets herself sink into Oksana's wanting mouth.

The kiss is slow but needy, Oksana's chin tipped up, up, up for more. It feels like she's taking something from her, or giving, she's not sure, but the sensations run through her like a storm, the wet slide of Oksana's tongue soothing between sharp teeth.

She lets them nip.

It leaves her breathless.

She thrums.

She finally understands the story Oksana had told her, the meaning of temptation. She had her taste, now, and she was just about ready to abandon any notion of paradise just to have it again.

Oksana makes a soft, whining sound and drags her in for another until one kiss melts into dozens and they're left sprawling on Eve's porch, careless to the birds or the breeze, only present to each other.

She doesn't sleep.

Oksana had left her without fanfair, fed and watered in the dead of night.

She'd kissed her, held her face, whispered _see you soon_ instead of _goodbye_ , and Eve had tried so hard not to cry and then done it anyway.

Now the sheets feel like a choke-hold.

The bed is empty.

She'd cherished the space after Niko's death, but not tonight.

Tonight she pictures Oksana there, back from whatever monstrosity she'd successfully slain, her body hurt and exhausted but beautifully alive.

She pictures Oksana in pitch dark, the only light source the pond green of her eyes and the gleam of her smile.

She pictures Oksana curled beside her and then beneath her, safe in her arms and cradled by her thighs, the rise and fall of her lulling Eve into relief.

She tries not to think of what lies under Oksana's armour, the patchwork of war wounds shielded from the world.

She tries not to imagine her mouth on them, tongue firm and soothing, swallowing the sounds she'd collated in her memory- Oksana's laugh, her sighs, the way she grunted under strain.

Her mind races.

Oksana would be soft with her, like she always was. She'd coddle Eve, charm her with chivalry, all wandering eyes and patient hands. Eve imagines her on her knees, her lovely, strong warriror adorned in flower garlands, pliant to her every whim.

She could take on Oksana's burden. She would. Rid her of any responsibility or expectation and unravel her to the very bones, to put her back together filled only with light and love and Eve's adoration.

Her skin grows hot at the thought and she sighs into her pillow, burying her face there. Her fingers itch to sink between her legs, to stoke the simmering there.

It ebbs and flows, aching unpleasantly.

Eve could vanquish it in several quick minutes but it would be wrong, miplaced somehow, to spend her pleasure on the memory of Oksana instead of the real her, to lose herself for a moment knowing Oksana was already out to sea, swallowed in the vast expanse of it.

She throws the covers off, growling as she wraps herself in coats.

The walk to the temple is quick and undisturbed.

She goes bare-footed across the hill, the ground soaked with morning dew.

Desire sings beneath her skin, clawing at her despite the cool dawn wind and the difficult climb up the steps, despite the harsh marble leaning up to kiss her as she kneels.

She lets eyes fall on her from the open heavens. They keep her company.

The sky above glows in pinks and yellows.

She lights candles - for Oksana and for herself, the flames small and insignificant, hardly enough to eclipse the terror in her heart.

She bows her head against her clasped, trembling hands, nestled at the foot of Mars' towering stone body, and preys he hears her, and all the others, begging them to bring Oksana home, safe, whole and just the way she remembers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come tweet me @vracs1!


	3. Reuniting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW. Also, this is LONG.

//

The weeks drag like tree sap without her.

Eve spends her long hours with Bill, rooted firmly beside him but not fully present.

He cooks for her, washes her hair, takes her to gardens and to the ocean, but her thoughts stay loyal to Oksana.

Each time she looks out on the water, she pictures Oksana's ship sliding in towards her and then Oksana herself, lauching into the waves, unable to wait as she rushes to shore and into her dry, thirsty arms.

Bill holds her hand tighter. He never asks and he doesn't need to.

Eve wears her worry like a soaked blanket, dark and heavy and cold.

She thaws in Elena's hands, kisses to her forehead and scattered in her hair.

Jess lets her hold her stomach, the little life inside rumbling with excitement, with eagerness to greet her. Eve wishes she could see the baby now, to hug close and be reminded of the blessings of life and her own fleeting mortality, there to be made most of.

She doesn't.

She sulks and sours. Keeps to herself. Works half-heartedly and sleeps hardly ever.

She struggles to remember life before. What had that been like? The still pond of her existence before the ripples and then the tide. 

With Oksana gone, she feels hollow.

She feels the way the wood might with its embers dead, the sky without its song, the market without its light. She longs to be filled, first with Oksana's laughter and then with her touch, soft but vivid as the day she'd left, her long fingers shy across her cheeks, her neck, her arms.

In the sleepy evening glow, Eve had wanted to hold her, wanted to steal time to dart kisses all across the core of her, to keep her there just a little longer in the safety of her home.

And Oksana had wanted it too - Eve could see it on her soft mouth, parted and gasping, the way the tears had swelled but only fallen for one of them.

She'd left, then, without another word, Eve's hair pin fastened to her armour and her string wound firm across her breast plate.

She spends weeks with the moon. She imagines Oksana looking up to see the same sky in a different land, the only thing they shared.

She hopes Oksana thinks of her.

She prays Oksana misses her, enough for it to motivate her, to inspire that fury-soft way she approached everything with.

She longs to watch Oksana sleep, angry not to be intimately acquainted with it.

She wants to see Oksana with her soldiers, preparing for battle, mapping out the labyrinth, training and eating and bathing and swaying in the treacherous seas that might just lead her back.

They do.

Oksana's ship moors in the night while the city sleeps. 

Eve feels it, the way the winds change, the rustle in the soil.

That morning, she'd spent her insomnia outside, wrapped in blankets on the porch, the horses still and settled.

Her home sat far removed from the horizon, the cypress trees stitching field and pathways into solitude.

The sky comes to life. The darkness lifts on the marching body of a soldier, too-tall and too-broad to be Oksana's, his steps harsh and hard as they come towards her.

She both sinks and bolts. It leaves her dizzy, breathless with fear as he approaches.

"Eve Polastri?" His eyes sit, kind, youthful beneath clenched brows, his fist strong as he extends it.

"Yes."

"For you," his fingers spread and Eve sobs.

Her pin sits long and rusted in his palm, the tip bloody.

She starts to tremble, head first and then shoulders until her entire body's quaking and the grief consumes her.

When her knees buckle, the boy steps in, gripping around her waist to keep her steady.

"You alright?"

His voice is soft. Low. Eve looks up to see that he's just a kid, hardly older than Oksana herself. His curls sit flat beneath his helmet and Eve pulls him closer and pretends it's Oksana she's holding.

"Is she - "

"Hurt," he nods.

Eve snaps back. Swallows. Swallows again.

"What?"

"She's resting," he says gently, pushing the pin into Eve's hand again. "Wanted you to have this."

"Where - _what_? I - can I - I thought -"

"Not yet. Soon. The boat will anchor before morning, I came early to bring the news."

Eve searches his face. His smile is small but unwavering, a large hand to Eve's shoulder.

"She's on her way, Eve. She'll come to you. Everything's fine, I promise."

As he turns to go, Eve's left with a thundering sense of loss and anticipation, uncertainty looming low around her like fog.

She hurries, tugging him back.

"What's your name?"

"Does it matter?" he shrugs, his smooth skin flushed with cold.

And it should, it should matter to Eve to know the name of the man who'd brought Oksana's back, who came to end the melancholy that had settled down with her like an uninvited guest.

But before she has a chance to insist, to offer food and drink and thanks, the only thing left of him are footprints in Eve's garden and the lingering scent of him, metallic with war.

Oksana comes to her as promised, and brings with her Eve's joy.

In twilight at Eve's doorway, she's pale, the shadows long and deep across her face to wash her in greys.

Eve's hands begin to shake.

They linger, on Oksana's shoulders and on her cheeks, but don't land. They ache to grab her.

The ache turns to a howl and Eve drops to the floor, her sobs swallowed by the soft skirts of Oksana's dress, her body no longer clad in metal but in linen instead, the caps of her knees scraped raw, her feet as blue as her hands.

Eve stares up and tries to breathe.

"Hi - hi. I missed you. I can't believe - I missed you, I missed you, I missed you every fucking day."

Oksana reaches to bring her to stand. "Hello."

The sound is soft, playful.

Eve cries harder.

"I am okay, see?"

Eve brackets her face. She's careful not to brush the cuts, glistening like wet pebbles, careful not to put her mouth there as Oksana smiles and winces and sways on her feet.

She looks a shadow of her former self. There's shellshock in her eyes, a detached stare Eve tries to refocus, nudging her with whisper-soft kisses to her nose and lips and forehead.

"You're home. I'm going to take care of you, I'm going to give you everything you need. You're right where you're meant to be," she whispers, pulling them inside and letting the front door click shut to swamp them in darkness.

Oksana stands, half-curled against the archway as Eve frets with her surroundings, rushing to light candles and create space. She's desperate to fill the quiet, to eclipse the shallow drag of Oksana's breathing, pained against her cradled chest.

"I need a bath."

Eve laughs. It's sharp, shrill. She spins to find Oksana unfastening her sandals, the intricate ribbon hard to unravel as she clutches her stomach.

"Let me," she says, quick to stoop and help.

Oksana's patient and restrained.

Eve sees the sweat bloom on her forehead, glossy with exertion. She helps her step out of the shoes and guides her into the courtyard.

The bathing pool is warm. The summer sun had stretched into evening, elongating Eve's misery. The day had seemed endless, then. She's grateful for it now, handing Oksana a towel, sheepish with inexperience as Oksana moves to undress.

"I can - do you want me to go because - I can."

The dress drops to the floor.

Eve's heart thuds.

Dozens of bruises constellate across Oksana's ribs and ridges of her spine. The skin there looks ashen, longing to burst and bleed. Oksana lets her look, still as the water under Eve's appalled but worshipful eyes that drink it all in.

Sharp, claw-like lines scrape around the back of one shoulder.

Fingerprints mar Oksana's neck and climb along her jaw.

A thick, pink line sits straight above Oksana's navel.

Eve doesn't drop her gaze - only stares at the scar stitched crooked into her pretty skin.

She's going to touch it. When the time comes, she'll let it shrink beneath her mouth.

She'll ask Oksana about it, about the monster that had made her body a playground and a graveyard.

But not tonight. Tonight is for healing and softer things.

Eve nods as Oksana whispers _you can look_ before lowering into the pool, muscles of her back dancing before they submerge.

The sound Oksana releases rolls out into the air on her warm breath. Eve takes careful steps to sit on the edge. She sinks her feet into the water. Leans forward as Oksana looks up.

"I can't believe you're here."

"You have little faith in me, Eve."

They're the first words Oksana speaks, beyond the trembling ones she'd let out as Eve had greeted her, or the pained laugh as she'd watched Eve make a meal of her hallway, scrambling to tend to her every need.

"I put all my faith in you," Eve says confidently, placing her hand over Oksana's wet fingers. "Every day."

"You thought I would die?"

She scoffs. "Your friend has a flare for suspense."

"Hugo?"

Eve nods. She'd find him again, soon.

"He is very nice - very annoying but, very nice," Oksana nods and the mention of him eases the worry in her eyes, softening still as Eve thumbs her chin and brushes her mouth.

"I can't believe you're here," she whispers again.

This time Oksana laughs, loud and indignant, pouncing forward to nip at her finger, the water sloshing around her.

"Don't be such a drama queen, Eve, I was always going to come home to you, no? Look at me," she spins full of flare in the water and then topples, sucking her lips behind teeth as pain rattles through her.

"Come over here," Eve parts her knees, guiding Oksana between them.

The water sits below her breasts. Eve had expected her to stay low or stoop, to leave Eve's imagination racing. There is nothing left to imagine though, when Oksana obeys, ostentatious as she stretches to put her hands on Eve's thighs.

"Turn around."

"Eve."

"Turn around."

"Let down your hair first," Oksana says, voice like gravel as her eyes flash.

Everything else seems insignificant to the way Oksana looks at her, like she might push up against the ledge and eat Eve alive.

She feels it poker-hot between her legs, Oksana's dripping hands sliding higher, nestled in the cotton of her toga.

Eve does as she's told. Her curls sit flat in the summer heat. She draws her fingers through them, Oksana's eyes like magnets.

She leans down and puts her palms to Oksana's shoulders. "Turn around."

Oksana listens this time, whining when her vision of Eve is replaced with Eve's mosaic walls, tall and colourful at the far end of the courtyard, the Roman hills sprawling between the columns of Eve's home.

Eve flicks soft strands of blonde off Oksana's damp neck and rubs her there. She counts the beauty spots scattered across her nape, below the braid tucked low across her scalp. She maps out Cassiopeia and leaves a kiss under Oksana's hairline, where the shell of her ear hides unblemished skin.

She reaches for the jug.

The clay is rough in her hands and comfortingly heavy. She fills and pours, watching Oksana's hair darken and her skin shine as it grows clean.

The scent of petrichor rises off her.

The bath grows murky.

Oksana's head drops back.

"Eve."

"I missed you."

She lowers a kiss to a thumb-print bruise, and another, staggered across a shoulder blade, a wound, a bone.

"Eve."

"Are you hungry? What would you like?"

"Starving."

"Of course you are," Eve chuckles. Except when she moves to kiss the crown of Oksana's head, Oksana twists to look at her, honey-gold in the candlelight and carefully apologetic.

"I can't stay tonight."

Eve's mouth shakes.

"There is a celebration in the morning. I - There will be people. To prepare me. Dress me. Carry me, probably," she rolls her eyes, "to let Rome know. To let Konstantin know - he will be worried about me. I have to fulfill my duties - Okay?" she says around a soft pout. "And after -"

"After?"

"After, we will come here. We can -" she licks her mouth, smiling sweetly, head turned into the warmth of Eve's palm. "We will make up for lost time. We have a lot of time to make up, don't we?"

Eve nods, mute. She musters a hum when Oksana kisses the inside of her wrist and then, just like Eve had pictured, pushes herself through the agony and creaking ribs, up against the tiled ledge to kiss her properly, tongue urgent and mouth open for Eve to get lost in.

Homecoming is loud and tumultuous and teeming with colour.

Rome welcomes Oksana with its arms wide open, swamping her in flowers and cheer that resonates beyond the city walls.

Eve watches her above the crowd, lifted in procession so the world can see. She gleams with pride - it does her ego good, Eve knows - and something sweeter, quieter, just for Eve, when their eyes kiss before the palace steps.

Eve feels it on her mouth and in her stomach, the lull of Oksana's lips as if they were right there, the eager curve of her smile hungering for later.

Eve lets her be adored by others first:

Irina, with sisterly arms soft like garlands, wrapped in the tiger skin of Oksana's gown. 

Carolyn, whose kisses feel like fists, Eve imagines, as they land to the palms of Oksana's hands.

And Konstantin, singing her praises eagerly the way a father would, to the chorus-filled masses as he takes the bloody bull and sword and swaps them for her freedom. 

Eve knows it's for good, then, as quill hits papyrus: Oksana is at liberty to do as she pleases, to go where she may, to seek out whom she wants and make roots where the soil will take her, and it fills Eve with lovely expectation and a disarming thrill, to know hers is where Oksana will stay.

Night can't come fast enough.

She takes Bill, Elena and Jess to the feast. 

The moon hangs low for them and the wine flows fast. Eve has two left feet but she doesn't mind, not when Bill leads, not when she's allowed to get lost in the crowd, the sweat of it all-consuming, heady and thick to make her head spin.

Oksana stares at her. 

She stares with dark, dangerous eyes, the softness liquidated by swollen pupils. It makes Eve feel gloriously happy and overcome with nerves, to be the object of someone's affection, to be sought after and longed for despite the separation - by land and sea and war - and then by the bodies that stand in their way.

There are women. Eve had seen them before - young girls draped at Oksana's door, and older women too, in waiting, at the market, the training fields, to tend to Oksana's wounds. 

They gather now, naive with presumption that Oksana might choose one, pluck her like a grape, wet and bursting for her snapping teeth. 

Oksana chooses her, always her, always with a dampened longing, fists balled at her sides and eyes alert. Eve would think her angry by the flicker of her jaw, the sharp slice of her fast breath, careful not to frighten.

It makes Eve feel powerful. She wants to be frightened. Wants the softness and the raw unraveling that comes with being known.

She uses the rise in commotion and song to slip away, guided by firelight to the ever-changing shadows, grateful and shaken when Oksana steps up behind her.

"Eve."

The greeting skirts across her neck, carefully amused.

Eve fights the urge to smile and turns to find Oksana already is.

"Hi."

"You came."

"You didn't think I would?"

"Yes," Oksana shrugs, torn between arrogance and mirth. "But - it is nice to see it happen."

Eve leans against the ridges of a column. It presses hard between her shoulder blades, cool where Oksana's voice is hot, coasting between grins. When she reaches for her, Oksana's fingers curl into her own.

The proximity of her burns harder than the light, Eve can see her simmer roar, wondering if it might scald. Hands clasp her wrist and Oksana's thumb glides against her knuckles.

"You are wearing it."

The signet ring glows. Eve knows the skin beneath is paler than the rest of her, but she hasn't thought to check.

"I haven't taken it off."

It had been a piece of Oksana, the only one Eve had - a single constant - that she could sleep with, bathe with, the metal tight with promise around her finger.

Oksana's face fills with shadow, dark and melancholy as she moves to kiss Eve, first over the band and then her palm, along the deep, solid stitch of her lifeline. Eve turns her hand and Oksana's cheek settles there, mouth coy.

She looks different tonight. She wears the remnants of battle as badges of honour, along her jaw, the line of her neck. Eve finds her beautiful, the way sad things are, like drying flowers or an empty house.

Oksana's earrings dangle, two forbidden fruits dipped in gold and onyx.

Eve longs instead for the berry pink of her mouth.

"What is this dress?"

There are hands on her waist now. They touch below the staircase of her ribs and then up, evading the plunge of her neck line, low to leave her collar bones bare and her breasts hidden.

"You don't like it?"

"Yes, of course," Oksana swallows. She tugs at the sash. It pools in red handfuls and Eve wants it loose, on the floor, wants skin and nothing else. "I have excellent taste."

The day of Oksana's departure, Eve had taken Oksana's gift to the tailor, had it cut and sewn and molded to her body, for Oksana as much as herself, transforming dusty, burgundy linen into feather-light gown to replace how softly Oksana had touched her, the whispers her mouth had left on Eve's loneliest places.

"Will you stay?"

Eve leans to her. She warms with confidence. "Not for long."

Oksana cocks her head. Studies her. "No? You don't want to dance with me."

Eve wanted to. Desperate for Oksana's arms to cinch and lead her into step. Hungry for that rocking rhythm, hip to hip like tide to coast to make her sweat, to whet her appetite and wet her thighs.

Still. Her head shakes _no_ and Oksana rises to the challenge.

"Is it boring?"

"No."

"Yes it is," Oksana laughs. She folds arms across her chest and looks with nothing but exasperation at the mingling crowds.

They sing for her. Chant for her.

"They are idiots."

"They're grateful. They're celebrating you. You should be celebrated - you deserve it."

Eve follows Oksana's gaze.

"They worship you - as they should! You saved the day," Eve chuckles. "You're strong, and so beautiful -"

" _You_ are beautiful, Eve - and okay sure, I am beautiful, yes, but that is not very important now."

Oksana is prodding. She's full of play and Eve elbows her, breathless when she's pulled in.

They fit side by side, a secret pair.

"I think someone needs to take you down a peg."

"Really."

Eve swallows. Hums softly.

"Is that an offer?"

"I don't think I stand a chance, but it's nice of you to pretend."

"I would let you, Eve," Oksana's voice lowers, sincere and coarse, "if that is what you wanted."

 _She wants, she wants, she wants_. She'd been reduced to nothing but wanting, but for what? Oksana. To have her. To be had. To keep.

"Is that what you want?"

"With you?" Oksana nods, tongue fast across her lip, "I want everything. Everything you want."

"Do you remember what you said? That - you don't feel things. You don't feel anything."

Oksana's fingers play along her mouth, pinching at her chin, quieting the words. "I don't know."

"Is that true? What you said."

Eve watches her lower to the floor, mindful of her gown as she sits on the steps and waits for Eve to follow.

The ground is dewy but Oksana's hand sits heavy and smoldering as it finds solace in Eve's lap.

"I feel things - when I'm with you. I think maybe I don't know how to feel anything else. When I am with you - it is easy, I don't have to - think," she sighs.

Eve squeezes.

"And now I remember all of it and -" she winces, quakes with something Eve struggles to name, "it is all I think about."

"All of what?" Eve says carefully.

"Death. War. Crete was - it was different, Eve, not like here. Not a game. Not like Rome. Not like any place. I dream about it. I think about it, all of the time. What else is there to think about? I will never forget."

Oksana's weary as she talks, smothered in misery as she tells Eve of the months at sea, steeped in constant nausea and a world off-kilter. Her toes curl in her sandals as she carves out pictures of the labyrinth for Eve, its high walls vacuous and twisted, sickly with the stench of flesh, of sticky decomposition Oksana had stepped over and fumbled past. She doesn't linger on the minotaur, though Eve can imagine it all and squeezes her eyes to stop herself.

What frightens her aren't the claustrophobic images that swim in her mind's eye. Not the killings or the fury or the volatile beast that made myth a reality.

It's Oksana, who seems so plagued by it still, a sadness permeating through the hollow in her voice, the clench in her tendons. Her sweet, unshakeable warrior, finally shaken by something.

Now she sits so warm and alive and distant and tethered to Eve with a heaviness Eve wishes gone. 

It is everything and not enough. 

She slides her fingers - palm to the heavens - atop Oksana's knee and waits for their hands to kiss.

"Want to know what I think about?"

Oksana's eyes are hopeful and endearingly hopeless as they settle on her.

"I think about you. When I'm angry or lonely or too tired to sleep - I think about you. I thought about you every day, about where you'd got to, what you were doing and who you were doing it with, if you were safe, if you were scared...if you missed me at all. I thought about your weapons - if they'd be enough, if I should've given you something else, if it was even going to work. I'd look up at the stars and wonder if you did the same. And it helped, it did - and it didn't -" she laughs breathlessly, "the big black vastness of it all, the insignificance of everything - it drove me absolutely insane but - it was the only thing we shared and it reminded me of you. Every night and every day. I always think of you."

Oksana's gaze glistens the way lakes do: calm and mossy and burbling beneath the surface with a myriad of things.

Eve pictures diving head first, never to come up.

And then Oksana blinks and the lake clears.

"I think about you too."

Oksana traces the red of Eve's dress. Her fingers glide up to a thigh and then to a waist, a forearm, Eve's bare shoulder, indecisive and wanting. She fingers the stitching at Eve's neckline, the edges where the thread sits neatest, where it's stark and matches Oksana's own. 

"You and me," she says and her smile lifts as she touches Eve's hair, fingertips only, "we are cut from the same cloth."

Eve doesn't have time to think, mouth barely parted before Oksana's is there, fitting against hers, a reflection of herself, her counterpart and her equal.

The walk back home feels like a million miles and a stone's throw.

It hardly registers, between Oksana's kisses, thieves with sticky fingers stealing Eve's breath and all of her attention.

There are hands on her. Eve lets them twist into her hair and her clothes and when she breaks away, she lets herself be chased, laughing - up the hill, the steps and the garden - and then caught - up against the firm oak of her door, the tiled walls, the table.

"Wait -"

"Eve -"

Eve pants. The air richochets inside her as she holds Oksana at arm's length.

She burns with the way Oksana stares at her, bewildered and ravenous but utterly controlled. 

"I want you."

"I know," she swallows. Takes a step back. Aches when Oksana whines after her, slumping against the door petulantly.

"Let me touch you."

"Not yet."

"I want you -"

"You have me."

"I want -" Oksana huffs. She takes a step forward but Eve moves back, and they dance and dodge but Oksana doesn't touch, doesn't dare, only follows hungrily through the atrium, the courtyard, the bedroom, lead by the taste of Eve's breath, inches away but never hers.

Eve stops at the bed. "Oksana -"

Her voice shakes. All of her shakes, like tiny tectonics. The lava inside burbles but she pushes it down.

"- I need you to take your clothes off."

Oksana laughs, exhasperated. "Really."

"Yes." _Take off mine_ , she thinks.

Her turn would come.

Oksana inflates, brow raised to challenge her. Her mouth curves sideways, head cocked, hands on hips. "What if I don't?"

The air shifts. Briefly, Eve wonders just how much power Oksana would concede, _could_ concede.

The contrast is stark - Oksana, ruthlessly devine, God-like in Eve's eyes and Rome's, too; and Eve, a woman, but nothing more.

She scrapes her teeth across her lip and shrinks. "Please."

Oksana smiles.

"You said everything I want," she reminds cautiously.

Maybe Oksana will pounce. Maybe she will bite, finally, in the warm solitude of Eve's home, slave to her own desire. Maybe Eve will fall prey to it, the way it had been written in the stars, decimated without a say.

But Oksana rolls her eyes and shakes her head, half-pity and half-intrigue, beautiful as she starts to strip with practised ease, first her dress and then the undergarments.

She moves languidly, knowingly.

Eve drinks her in.

How many women had seen her like this? How many women had been enticed by her, enamoured, engulfed?

She starts to pound, sore between her thighs as Oksana stands completely bare before her, her pale lines curved but strong.

Her shoulders sit broad, low, sculpted into arms that nurse veins like tributaries, racing into long fingers Eve liked to be held by.

The body of her is scuffed but faultless, breasts full, nipples the same shade as her mouth, stomach firm and littered with bruises, hips womanly and legs like a man's. She's fair, much lighter where Eve is dark, coarser in the places that make Eve's mouth water.

Oksana knows she is perfection. Eve can tell, her stance arrogant, too tall to be anything but proud.

She's statuesque. Towers above Eve a tiptoe or so, and Eve has to arch to reach to kiss her. But not yet.

"Close your eyes."

" _Eve_."

"I won't hurt you."

Oksana laughs, hiccups when Eve steps behind her. She's uncharacteristically quiet when she says, "You might."

Eve puts her mouth to a bare shoulder. The skin is lilac-blue, hard where the blood pools, and Eve takes extra care to shield her teeth, to slide her tongue but only just. Oksana comes loose beneath her touch.

"Keep them closed."

She sneaks a glance at the silhouette of Oksana's profile, the slope of her nose and Cupid's bow, the round of her chin. Her lashes fan out, translucent in the low light, barely specks against the smooth rise of her cheek. She kisses her there.

Oksana's lips twitch.

Eve kisses her there too, kisses the constellation at the corner of her eye, tastes the faint tang of salt at her throat. It bobs once, twice, rumbling as Oksana moans.

Her eyes flutter open.

" _Oksana_."

The heat in her belly flares when Oksana obeys, squeezing them shut through gritted teeth, shuddering as she's disarmed completely, red sash pulled from Eve's dress and up to her eyes where Eve winds it once, twice to darken her world.

Oksana's hands grip at nothing. She heaves, quick, short bursts of air fraught with excitement.

Eve licks into her mouth to make it stop, licks harder when Oksana fists her hair, licks deep and rough at the primal sounds Oksana chokes on - soft, hurried whimpers a wounded animal might make.

Her palms roam to Oksana's breasts - one over her heart and one between her shoulder blades where the skin lays slick and echoes with Oksana's pulse.

Oksana fights to push away and then forward, reaching blindly for Eve's face.

"Is this okay?"

"Yes. Don't stop."

Eve hums. She stoops to kiss Oksana's sternum, giddy and terrified when Oksana nods in affirmation, chin tipped to the ceiling with pleasure. Eve kisses lower. She chases a nipple, lenient as she lavishes until it pebbles in her mouth and the foundations of Oksana threaten to buckle.

She tightens her hold. Kisses the other, firmly this time so Oksana yanks at her hair.

It makes her thrum and thrum in every corner of herself until she's aching, burning between her legs.

Oksana palms her shoulders and urges her down.

Eve allows herself one indiscretion, sucks her affection into the ridge of a hip, the unblemished skin of a thigh, the scent of Oksana citrus-bright and disorientating, the sight of her hypnotic.

She stands and takes Oksana's hand.

"Do you know what you do to me?"

Oksana shakes her head, frazzled. "No. Yes. Eve -"

"You drive me crazy," she sighs. "Here."

She guides Oksana's hand beneath her dress and lets Oksana feel for herself, cool fingers between her swollen folds, too slow and too tender and Eve ruts, feels a tight thread coil inside her and pull.

Oksana tilts to search for her mouth. "I want to see you."

"Be patient."

"I don't know how."

This is a fantasy. A lucid dream, Eve's sure of it, flooding with embarrassment and arousal when Oksana sneaks her fingers back and into her mouth, swaying in her spot. She grunts as she licks them clean, greedy, waiting for Eve to kiss her, to erase the taste until she's given more.

Eve is nothing but generous.

"Tell me what you want."

"Everything. To put my mouth on you. To taste you. Touch you. _Anything_. Please Eve, I need it, let me -"

Oksana could take it, pillage whatever Eve's body had to offer and leave her high and dry. She could tear the sash and gratify herself, quick and instant, the way she does in the Colosseum, a stranger to self-control.

Instead, she drops to the ground and waits, eyes covered but face up, pliant to Eve's palm. She shakes, starved.

Eve strokes her gently, caressing the crown of her head.

"Is this what it takes to bring you to your knees?"

Oksana keens.

"Just for me."

Oksana's jaw clenches, fingers curling into her bare thighs. She gleams with sweat. Her pulse pounds in her neck, Eve can see it in the low light.

She rolls her dress to her waist and watches Oksana inhale her, hand cradled to the curve of her nape.

"Once."

"Yes," Oksana nods adamantly and with little finesse, noses between Eve's legs, licking firmly for fear it might be taken from her, hands to the backs of Eve's thighs, squeezing when Eve slumps.

"Enough."

Oksana licks again. 

Eve bucks, grinds shamelessly, loses herself in the unrelenting press of Oksana's mouth long enough to regret it.

"Stand up," she tries and the words stick inside her parched throat, flies in honey let loose when Oksana rises from her knees.

Her mouth and chin shine.

Eve cleans her.

"Do you have any idea what I'm going to do to you?" she pushes gently to gain some semblence of control, guiding Oksana back onto the alter of her bed, ready to worship.

They kiss. It drags, tongue to teeth as Eve lifts wrists above Oksana's head, feels her arch, eager for friction or pressure or relief.

Eve cups her face. There's thick heat smeared across her pubic bone where it sits fastened between Oksana's soaked thighs.

"Keep your arms up."

"Eve - please -"

"You'll get to touch me. I'm right here."

"This is not -"

"It's okay. Don't think, just -"

Oksana's wrists stay rooted to the pillow and Eve floods with affection, smiling into her mouth.

"- forget everything else, I'm right here," she murmurs, pressing her lips over Oksana's clothed eyelids, one, two, kisses instead of coins, across her throat, tongue instead of fist.

Oksana hisses when Eve hits a nerve, pushing into bruise-skin-bruise, soothing with pecks to her ear and behind, tugging at the delicate gold.

"Touch me. Touch me -"

Knuckles to her knee.

"- fuck me, Eve -"

Thumb to her navel.

"- lower, please -"

Mouth to her breasts.

"Eve, I need you to -"

Mouth to her scar.

Oksana gasps.

Eve lingers there, the hard line of it pink, raw, knitted fresh. It flickers beneath her finger, Oksana's muscles twisting and untwisting, vibrating like the skin of a drum.

Oksana sobs. Her fingers curl above her head.

Eve nuzzles into her solar plexus.

She strings praise along each one of Oksana's injuries, _so brave_ and _so beautiful_ and _so good_ , until her hand's dropping between Oksana's sprawled thighs, open to the midnight air.

Oksana grows tight, hard like a bow.

She feels soft, like a flower, Eve thinks, a mirror image of herself. 

She begins to rub, imagines petals in a rain shower, sinks deeper into the give of that secret, rough spot drenched like soil, warm and pulsing and sweet to smell and Oksana moves against her, knee hooked to hip, rough and determined, hands in Eve's hair, scraping against her scalp.

" _Eve_."

"You feel incredible."

"Fuck - _God_ \- "

Oksana feels like a piece of paradise, lush and responsive and impossibly wet. She's holding back, Eve knows, from the low mewls let loose in her ear, the moans that barely register.

She's perfect. Eve lets the image of her, the taste and smell of her burn through her mind in technicolour.

"Let yourself go, let me hear you."

 _"Fuck_ \- please - I can't, Eve -"

"Good girl. You're so close, I can feel it."

Oksana shudders.

"You're being so good for me, let go, baby."

" _Oh_ -" 

"Let go."

Oksana's mouth falls open and Eve feels the tremor, the harsh crescendo of it as the orgasm winds and rips through her body, the tender cushion of her flickering around Eve's fingers.

Eve kisses her, doesn't stop until Oksana's scrambling for her hand, caving in on herself as her head hits the pillow.

She shimmers all over, ribs bellowing like the sails of a ship.

Eve slides the blindfold off to unveil a look of helpless ecstasy, wild eyes dark with relief as she cups Oksana's chin and tucks her own arousal into her mouth.

"Don't move."

"You said I could -" Oksana pouts and then groans when Eve rolls down without detour or pretense, whispers _look at me while I do this_ , and makes Oksana fall apart again, mouth fastened and fingers curled, a dedicated novice.

The seconds slide quick and easy and Oksana comes, softer, lazier but no less captivating.

Eve feels the remnants on her shoulders, nail bites brief like sunburn, and on her tongue, thighs tight and then loose around her to keep in the tide.

Oksana sighs and stretches.

The long, golden planes of her are summer in Eve's sheets.

She yawns.

Eve bubbles with laughter, suddenly stumped as she licks her mouth, not a drop wasted.

The pillow lays curled under Oksana's head and then pressed to her face, muffling her words.

"That is the closest I have ever come to death."

Eve is glad for it. A little proud, even, that she did it: brought Oksana to a place mostly untouchable, visceral and delicate and entirely overwhelming, by her hands and mouth, for the first time and, she hopes, not the only.

It makes her head spin.

She moves to lay side-by-side, to feel the effervescent heat Oksana always seemed to keep, but Oksana pulls her close, on top, fingers to her wrist and waist between her thighs.

Eve stares at her breasts, the relaxed way she lounges and the rose-tint of her cheeks.

"Can you ride?"

The words sling between her legs.

The horses lay dormant outside.

And Niko, should he enter her thoughts, but he doesn't, only Oksana, who sits up and takes fistfuls of her hair, gentle but commanding in such a way that Eve's back arches and leaves her throat exposed.

Oksana kisses her there. Welcomes arms around her neck. And bucks her.

"Yes. I - holy _fuck_ -"

Oksana's eyes flash. "Then, ride."

It wouldn't take long. Eve had felt the beginnings of her orgasm long before she'd put her mouth to work, teetering on the edge of pleasure-pain as she'd let her body echo with Oksana's phantom touch.

When she grinds down, Oksana laughs.

" _Eve_."

" _Don't_."

"Look at you," she says, nose brushing to Eve's own and then against her jaw and temple. "You are shameless."

"Oh - fuck you."

Oksana laughs again. It's colourful and soft and reels Eve in for another kiss.

She rocks against Oksana, mimics the all-too-familiar motion, like relearning an old song, except Oksana is smoother and gentler, smells better, is kinder, more encouraging, careful and careless in just the right way to make Eve throw caution to the wind and snap her hips faster.

Oksana's hands clasp around her waist. They urge and grip. They hurt but they hold too, and Eve lets them, lets them tangle in her hair and rest on her ass, smacking her softly and then squeezing tight.

"Don't come yet."

Eve rolls her eyes, even though she's close - she's so close it hurts, she's so close she's breathless and coated in sweat and responding in ways beyond her control, she could thrust once, twice, and plummet to her end without a second thought.

"Don't you dare come."

She growls.

She opens her eyes to find Oksana staring at her, marveling, grin full of wonder and something darker, feral almost, something Eve had seen in the training grounds and in battle, but not in months.

"Hold onto me."

Oksana grabs her close, so fast they collide, ribs and hips scraping as she throws her onto her back.

"Shit."

"Turn around."

Eve's stomach drops. She throbs. "What?"

"Turn over."

"Oksana -"

"It is my turn," she says gently, scooting back to make space for Eve to do as she's told. She must sense the panic, the fear as Eve shakes, because she softens, grasps Eve's hand to guide her, breaking the spell long enough for Eve to catch her breath and find her footing, taking up position on her knees. 

Oksana doesn't touch her.

Doesn't move.

Eve stares at the window as Oksana stares at her, gaze scorching along the ridges of her spine and the backs of her thighs, between them.

"You are very wet."

Eve moans and grinds back into nothing. Looks over her shoulder.

Oksana licks her mouth and bows to her. She sinks her hand into Eve's hair, caressing, fingers combing so soothingly they almost lull Eve into half- sleep. The kisses land gently, over her shoulder blade and her ribs, tickling, gliding on Oksana's breath.

Eve leans back to feel more.

"Do you want me to touch you?"

"What do you think?"

"Do you want me to be gentle?" Oksana sighs. She nuzzles into the nape of Eve's neck, nipping her.

Eve has an overwhelming urge to turn. To roll over and pull Oksana in, to make love to her again and let her let loose, to lavish her with tenderness and give her the homecoming that lasts into dawn and late morning, tasting and feeding in a tireless loop.

"Whatever you feel."

And God, she _felt_ , she'd told Eve so, made it very clear only minutes before.

"Too much of everything."

"Show me."

Oksana's arm comes around her, hands splayed across her breasts, first fingertips and then palms, all over her chest and stomach. She touches her with greedy entitlement, handling her with precision but a sort-of messy want that makes Eve feel trapped by her own skin, waiting to burst out.

She jerks. She drops down against Oksana's thigh as it slips mercifully between her own. They rock so easily, Eve would have the presence of mind to feel embarrassed if her wrists weren't being tugged behind her back, locked in Oksana's hand, fingers curled around her throat, brush-light.

Eve grunts and hiccups and lets her head fall back.

The image of her window no longer lies in front of her, its shutters spread to the midnight wind. It's too late and too dark for visitors but she fantasizes anyway - a neighbour, a stranger, in her field, an onlooker to the tangle of limbs and lips.

Her body spasms.

Oksana grips her harder so she feels it in her shoulders, the pull-back sore but welcome as Oksana's body presses flush to her own.

The hand at her throat draws circles, follows along her collar bone and finally falls behind her. 

Eve waits for it to tease, to play along her thighs, her buttocks, to snake around the front and rub her only when she begs.

"I missed you," Oksana says and doesn't wait at all, pushing her fingers in, two and quickly three, so Eve feels the sting and then the give and then the wet, unrelenting sound as Oksana starts to thrust, keeping tight hold of her to rein her in.

"I know. I missed -"

"I thought about this a lot," Oksana raises her voice, punctuating with a bite into Eve's hair, somewhere by her ear. She knows the remnants of it will stay there long after the night is over, dancing like ink on cloth each time her reflection finds her. 

She wants more of them, patterns of Oksana all over her like the patterns Oksana nursed herself, only borne out of love and not war. She wants to feel the sting of Oksana's nails, the press of her teeth, the ache in her knees, the click in her back. 

Oksana lets her hands free and reaches to touch her better.

"I masturbated about you - a _lot_."

"Stop it."

Oksana laughs, hoarse and cocquettish.

Eve loves to hear it, the sound lighting up the room as she pictures Oksana in bed, restless, hand between her legs as it works her over, imagining Eve's as she strains, calling Eve's name into the empty dark around her. 

She feels herself clench. Her thighs shake. Her heart thuds.

"I need -"

Oksana pushes her forward until she lands on her elbows, the weight of Oksana on top of her wonderfully smothering. She can barely move, stripped of any sense of autonomy with Oksana inside her, hand on her hand, breasts to her back, voice in her ear, yearning and angry and desperate.

"I'm close -"

"Not yet. Tell me you're mine, Eve."

" _Oksana_ -"

"Tell me."

She fists the sheets. She's never felt less and more like herself in her life, completely consumed by another. 

"I need to hear you say it. Say you're mine."

Oksana's fingers curl, tongue flat against Eve's jaw and then greedy in her mouth as she pulls Eve's hair.

Something inside Eve cracks.

Oksana had now, what she hadn't before - freedom, independence, success, celebrity, soon-to-be wealth.

But she'd wanted for more, immaterial things confessed only to Eve under that cherry-blossom birdsong sky. 

So what was Eve to her? A lover? Her home? Safety? Reprieve?

The thought that she might be all of them blooms through her chest and Eve whines, pushing her forehead into her sheets before she can answer, letting her pleasure take over. It hits hard and silent, furious as it bounds through her in violent waves that leave her aching and exhausted in Oksana's hold.

When she calms, the only sound is that of her own ragged breathing and Oksana, who scoots up beside her and whispers in a language Eve doesn't understand, fingertips mindless across the expanse of her back.

Eve basks in it.

Oksana looks at her like it hurts and she can't quite believe it, smiling only when Eve combs her hair and lets out a quick, tired laugh.

"I'm done."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she scoffs. Her joints creak already. "I'm not normally this -" she looks down at her body and then at Oksana's, gesturing vaguely, "you know..."

"Not normally - ?" Oksana coos. She's pleased with herself. She's gloating.

"Quite so - you know."

"Hmm. No, I did not know."

Eve uses her elbow to prop herself up. Beneath her, Oksana looks lovely, hair pale and fanned out on the pillow and eyes dark and searching. There's an open seam to her mouth where words gather but won't leave.

"Aggressive," she says and Oksana's eyes widen, scandalised, and then - 

"Did I hurt you?"

Eve still feels Oksana's touch around her wrists. It'll stay with her until morning and then the night, when they come together again.

"You couldn't hurt me."

Oksana's gaze falls to the open window and Eve's palm falls to her cheek.

"I could. I am excellent at it. It is my job."

She sweeps her thumb under Oksana's eye, the corner of her mouth. "Not any more."

When Oksana sighs, it sounds hollow. "What will I do instead?"

"Instead of hurting people?"

"Sure."

"Anything you want. You could be whatever you want, that's the beauty of it, right?"

Oksana looks at her. Her eyes shine like they did in Eve's garden and the night she left.

"What if I don't know how to be anything else?"

Eve lets her elbow fold and props her head on Oksana's shoulder instead, relieved when arms come around her.

She sympathised. She'd spent most of her life believing she couldn't be anything beyond somebody's wife, sleep-walking through her marriage, her friendships, unfulfilled but not unhappy, which, in hindsight, was worse.

"Do you want to be something else?"

"Yes. For you. I want to be better," Oksana says softly into the darkness. Her voice cracks like ceramic on tile and Eve's eyes snap up.

" _Hey_ \- you're a good person."

"You don't know that."

Eve knew it as she knew daybreak. She knew it as she knew her faith - blindly and with unshakeable certainty. She knew it in the way Oksana was with her, gentle and reserved and incredibly free.

"I have had a lot of practice."

"Okay," Eve laughs gently. "We'll get you practising something else. You could be a - I don't know - a horse trainer."

Oksana goes rigid below her, making her laugh harder.

"Okay, no? A teacher?"

" _Children_."

"Fine. How about - what about a philosopher?"

" _Eve_."

"No - you're right. Saturated market."

Oksana rolls her eyes.

"You don't have to rush. You could just be you, for a little while," she touches Oksana's mouth, the curve of her chin and its underside with her knuckles, "and I'll be here to want you, exactly as you are." 

"You have me."

Eve presses her mouth to Oksana's clavicle, the skin tangy and cool. She kisses up along Oksana's throat, melting when Oksana responds, her head tilting this way and that to make room for the attention.

Finally, she lands on Oksana's lips, plying them open with hands to her cheeks and a shy brush of her tongue.

The sound Oksana makes is quiet, content.

Weeks from now, they might be right here. They might have moved to the coast or South to Tivoli, maybe beyond. Eve might get to walk those gardens again, inhaling her father's favourite flowers with Oksana beside her and her hazel eyes shining in the foliage.

None of it matters in that moment, when Oksana puts arms around her and squeezes her tight, wordless but brimming with emotion.

"I am, you know. I was - right from the start."

"What?"

Eve shrugs, forehead heavy as it rests against Oksana's own. For all the restless thinking she'd done, the hoping and the apathy, the longing, the doubting in destiny and search for paradise, never had she thought it would find her first, pulled by a string to land in her lap.

She presses her palm to Oksana's heart and lets the ring rest heavy against her skin.

"Yours."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this tickled your fancy but you want a KE version of the smut, come let me know on @vracs1 and I'll work out a one-shot depending on demand! 😉


End file.
